Waitress Marching Band
“Last weekend was filled with great shows and exciting discoveries. While I put all of that in order, enjoy what for once isn’t usually shown around here, yes, the people. The exception comes with the event I was invited to shoot, the ArtScene : 25 – The Los Angeles Art Awards & Celebration. The event took place last week in the windy hallway of the LACMA, and gathered the gray hair among the city. I may suggest that you listen to NIN’s new album Year Zero while scrolling down since it’s what I have been listening to non stop while cropping and working on that white balance. Well and because cynicism always make things brighter, all of the people will magically appear as performers.”
ArtScene Awards @LACMA (April 18, 2007)
Created by Jerri Allyn, Leslie Belt, and Chutney Gunderson. Performed
by 35 waitresses: Anne Gauldin, Anne Mavor, Anita Green, Cheryl Swannack, Jeanne Shanin, Maisha Green, Barbara Stopha, Arlene Raven, Anne Phillips, Rita Rodriquez, Diana Diplata, Annette Hunt, Maurine Renville, Elizabeth Irons, Laurel Klick, Vanalyne Green, Terry Bleecher, Linda Pruess, Cheri Gaulke, Sue Talbot, Nancy Angelo, Elizabeth Bouser, Lorine DiRicco, Leibe Grey, Julie James, Maria Karras, Sue Maberry, Rina Viezel, Lynne Warshafsky, and Christine Wong; The DooDah Parade, Pasadena, CA, December 1979.A woman in a red sequined bathing suit twirls a baton, leaps in the air spread eagled, and catches the baton as she lands back on her feet, as a bandleader loudly blows a whistle. The two lead 33 other women along Colorado Boulevard, marching and singing to the accompaniment of a pot, pan, and kitchen utensil band.To the tune of “McNamara’s Band:”
Oh… We are the Marching Waitresses,
The finest in the land.
To our $1.65, we add whatever we can.
We bring your juice, your toast, your eggs,
Yours burgers, and your ham.
And all we ask is simple thanks
And a dollar in our hand!In the DooDah Parade, The Waitresses rallied the Los Angeles women’s art community to join them in publicly displaying unity and voicing empathy for working women. The DooDah is a Pasadena community-based parade still held a week prior to the Rose Bowl. The DooDah cost $20 to enter in ’79; the Rose Bowl cost $60,000. The Waitresses entered the parade out of a strong sense of unity in numbers, and for sheer fun. “The All City Waitress Marching Band” received national coverage via television and print media, again accomplishing the goal of expanding the art world audience to include a broader public.
Contents copyright Jerri Allyn / Artist. Welcome to use; simply contact to notify artist about use. Platform provided by Digication, Inc. Copyright © 2016. All rights reserved.Jerri Allyn
THE WAITRESSES
The Waitresses were a collaborative performance art group formed by artists who were also waitresses. These graduates of the Feminist Studio Workshop at The Woman’s Building humorously entertained audiences in restaurants, explored working conditions for women, and were precursors to later groups like The Guerrilla Girls. The Waitresses thrived within the feminist art community in Los Angeles. In their working process, they drew upon their own experiences and incorporated research about working women.
Jerri Allyn and Anne Gauldin co-founded The Waitresses in 1977. They premiered “Ready to Order?” in April 1978 with an original group of artists including: Jerri Allyn, Leslie Belt, Anne Gauldin, Patti Nicklaus, Jamie Wildman, and Denise Yarfitz. Later members included Elizabeth Canelake, Anne Mavor, Anita Green, and Chutney Gunderson
Berry. With more than 14 years of waitressing between them, they collaborated to transform their experiences into images and voices that would speak for the waitress as she had never been heard from in a public format.
The artists discovered that the waitress is analogous to the position of many women worldwide. They focused on four areas of interest: work, money, sexual harassment, and stereotypes of waitresses / women, such as mother, servant, and sex object. Out of the gallery and into the streets and restaurants, The Waitresses trademark was their ability to adapt their art form to reach a broad public. They received national media coverage via an NBC news special about sexual harassment on the job; appeared in The Los Angeles
Times, MS Magazine, and numerous other publications; created and performed “The All American Waitress Radio Show” for Pacifica Radio; “The All City Waitress Marching
Band” in Pasadena’s DooDah Parade; and participated in numerous conferences. AFter they premiered “Ready to Order?” the group proved to be so popular that they were regularly invited to create performances for public sites and conferences, and design installations for galleries and museums from 1978 – 1985.
Contents copyright Jerri Allyn / Artist. Welcome to use; simply contact to notify artist about use.
Platform provided by Digication, Inc. Copyright © 2016. All rights reserved.
Art Scene Awards
@
LACMA
Sunday, April 29, 2007
w w w . c o a g u l a . c o m
The LowDown on High Art™ online
By admin | April 18, 2007 – 11:34 pm – Posted in Uncategorized
The big shindig at LACMA was visited by swirling wind gusts upon the patio, distracting the proceedings, but host Richard Montoya kept it together and chaotically well-paced, accompanied at times by Llyn Foulkes on his legendary one-man band.
The three awards:
Lifetime Achievement went to Josine Ianco Starrels
Veteran Artist Award went to June Wayne
Young Artist Award went to Andrea Zittel
The sea bass entree was excellent. The panel discussion moderated by Ruth Weisberg and featuring the 4 voices of the ArtScene Visual Radio hosts (Marlena Donohue, Peter Clothier, Mat Geason and Hunter Drohojowska-Philp) was well-received. Congratulations are in order to ArtScene Publisher Bill Lasarow for 25 years of publishing the go-to-guide for the Los Angeles Gallery Scene.
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